Geez, okay. We stayed with this kindhearted dude, Mr. Ryan Chavez, in Houston, and he was a gentleman and a Beatles scholar. We listened to the four-track breakdown of several Sgt. Pepper songs, and let me tell you, the ghost vocal tracks on “A Day in the Life” were lovely and shocking. Not even talking about the bassline from “With A Little Help From My Friends.” Good god. Despite being the only Beatles song that sounds better covered (see Joe Cocker’s glorious Wonder Years theme, something the movie Across the Universe happened to get right), it still sports the most wicked non-repeating bassline ever. We went with Emily Driskoll to see our buddies The Whigs play down the street, and that rocked like it always does. Great live band, The Whigs, and the utmost gentlemen.

Somewhere along the way our wonderful booking agent, ole Papa Bear himself, Mr. Andrew Ellis, showed up, and he assured me he would never read this, because “blogs are lame.” At some point in the van ride Jesse dribbled some peepee on him (as, you know, to minimize bathroom stops, we often urinate in bottles, mostly Gatorade or Snapple. In this case, Jesse filled it a little too full, and maybe some of it spilled out on Ellis) which resulted in Jesse threatening to throw Ellis’ shoe out of the van after a fight ensued. I love Andrew Ellis. Len even gave him a Dale Earnhardt Jr., DVD that we got from an all-night Wal Mart (I’m sorry! We didn’t mean to support the beast! It was late and we were wanting produce and Blade Runner!), which was awesome.

What else? Loving that new Why? record. Loving my dear friend Gary Short’s fantastic poetry. Re-read Captain Maximus on the toilet during a terrific 4-a.m.-fast-food-revenge session. Check out our friends’ band The Sleeping Bulls. They’re on MySpace, and they rule like crazy. Their next album is gonna be called Chinatown, and it will make you go to a quiet place, where maybe you keep all the fragile things from your childhood, and then break everything in it. They’re the guys that turned me onto Talk Talk, Blue Nile, and Geoffery Hill’s poetry. Lost of driving, so I re-read The Aeneid, The Jungle Book, A Good Man Is Hard To Find, and finished season one of Twin Peaks (for maybe the sixth time). That’s it. One more blog to go after this. Hope it’s a joy.

Much love and all that...

Click above to watch "The Girl I Don't Know" from Teitur's new album The Singer, out now on Sidecho Records.

Click above to watch "Wanderlust" from Bjork's album Volta, out now on Atlantic Records.

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First, the names. There are more than 500 characters in War and Peace, most of them bearing names like Anya Dmitriovronsky Putinsvetlanaskayaverarovich (who should not be confused with Anya Dmitriovronsky Rasputinsputnikskaya) and, well, the head hurts within a remarkably short period of time.

Third, the insufferable meekness and docility of the women. I know it’s wrong to read one’s contemporary culture into a work from the distant past. Russian women of this time weren’t out there in front of the White Palace burning their bras and smoking ciggies and agitating for control of their own uteruses (uterii?) But can we have just a little spark of life from the women? Just a little? Something more than mouselike peeping accompanied by curtseying? Please.

Fourth, the daunting history. Before tackling War and Peace, again, I slogged through a massive history of the Napoleonic Wars. I am as ready as I am ever going to be, and I now understand, sort of, the intrigues that surrounded the assassination of the Duc d’Enghien and Czar Alexander’s abortive alliance with the Prussians. But this stuff is still about as invigorating as reading Livy and Tacitus, but the names are harder to pronounce and remember.

Fifth, the French. As in the language, not the people. I understand that all good, hip, cultivated Russians in the early 19^th century spoke French. It was their equivalent of buying Deerhoof and Vampire Weekend albums. But there are times when the French runs on, untranslated, for line after line, as in “Comrade, pass the borscht, and la Police et les Jésuites ont la vertu de ne jamais abandonner ni leurs ennemis ni leurs amis.” My thoughts exactly. Look, those two painful quarters of college French were a long, long time ago. I am going to struggle with anything more complicated than “Frere Jacques, frere Jacques, dormez vous.” It is, to put it mildly, la challenge.

So I’m creeping along, adrift in the peace, waiting for the war, and hoping for some good, bloody action pretty soon. I am sorely tempted to watch the movie instead. I really love Audrey Hepburn, and I bet she sneaks in a ciggie or two while hiding out in the salon. 

Click above to watch "Petrula the Destroyer" from Love in October's new album Pontus, The Devil, and Me, out now from The Musik Group.

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Nothing in God’s Universe is more depressing than Vegas in the daytime. We crossed the Mojave desert and I saw the huge Louie Anderson and Carrot Top billboards and I quaked and wondered things. What else was there to do but bust out Woven Hand on the iPod and try to take it head-on, like I was cavalry-charging Vegas, the Great Beast. I’ll lose to you, probably, but only a little.

Honestly, though, we had a lovely time. Our merch guy Andrew won $250 off his first shot at the dollar slots, and besides that, it was Friendville up in there—Bethany Carder (and her friend’s lovely bulldawg, which drooled on me and my sleeping bag and it was gloooorious), Chad and Sara, and that guy who threw us $60.

Which brings me to my next point: I want to buy the Blade Runner box set, but I don’t really need five versions of that movie (just two). What do you guys think? Should I take the $50 plunge, or what? Or just chill with season one of Twin Peaks? Lord, the options! Maybe I’ll just spend all van days watching anime.

Fast forward a few nothing days wherein we saw Iron Man (ruled ass, reminded me of my buddy Taylor Webb), and we were back driving through the desert. Such a strange place. Noble cacti standing like sentries, keeping watch over what? About 10 hours into the drive a storm blew up, dividing the sky in two. Half a great translucent lakewater blue and the other half a hellish bronze cut with lightning. Chimneysmoke raincolumns stretching from brown desert to brown sky, all dirt-colored clouds. The mountains as onlookers, judges even, weathering it all, more ancient than us, more lasting than our music or any music could ever be. (Sorry, Ben Gibbard. I will always choose humans over silly little art.) Like that Franz Wright poem about being spared from the “fate of those who love words more than what they mean.” That’s the real deal, son. No doubt about it.

So this is the part where I quit typing and go hang out with Patrick before the show. I hear he’s got some cupcakes, and one of them sucker’s got my name on it.

Click above to watch "Okay" from KaiserCartel's new record Okay...and other things we feel, out now on Bluhammock Music.

Johnson is, to put it mildly, a solipsistic songwriter, lost in his own mystical lyrical connections, so don’t come looking for straightforward narratives:

Strangled by the cellophane in the story of her life
She got theirs and they got mine
Eighteen tubes of butane running corporation fairs
It’s discount-like and out of time

That’s the way opening Centro-Matric track “Rat Patrols and DJs” starts out. Sure thing, dude. Number nine, number nine. But the obfuscation is presented in such a hook-filled, power-chord-buttressed way that it sounds just fine. He could be singing random words (and there is some evidence that he might be) and it would still sound great. On the other side of the schizophrenic schism, South San Gabriel opener “Emma Jane” is both much more lyrically focused and more musically sprawling; an impressionistic wash of acoustic guitar and cello that is simply begging for a hook.

It’s an impressive if frustrating approach, one that constantly highlights Johnson’s failures as well as his obvious gifts. His music deserves a wider audience, and this magnum opus just might be the logical place to start. But remember Shuffle Mode. It will help.

Back in the day (and really, the day was when I was about thirteen or fourteen years old) I paid a lot of attention to Black Sabbath. The two or three BS (and never was an acronym more appropriate) albums I owned perished in the Great Purge of Demonic Records that occurred right after my Christian conversion. I never rebought them, although I did go out and rebuy all the Led Zeppelin records that perished in the same purge. That was shortly after the Great Musical Counter Reformation of 1977, when I figured out that almost all CCM sucked, and that a lot of those so-called demonic records were pretty great.

That said, I really, really like Ozzy Osbourne. I have very little knowledge of the music he's made over the past thirty-five years. But he's such a loveable, befuddled old stoner that I am always delighted when I see him mumbling on camera. If Iron Man was about Ozzy instead of a guy in a robot suit, I would have been first in line at the theaters this past weekend.

Click above to watch "Fake Girlfriend" from Mixel Pixel's new album Let's Be Friends.

So, San Francisco rules, right? Certainly, but I’m getting ahead of myself. When we landed blissful and exhausted in San Diego, our first move was to hit up the world-famous San Diego Zoo. Incredible. We saw a polar bear try his damndest to retrieve a red ball lodged in an underwater crevice in his tank. I watched him for maybe 15 minutes, his huge paw swiping at the unreachable ball with all the tenacity of a 12-year-old hurling his dad’s tennis racket at the football stuck in the uppermost branch of a front-yard magnolia. The koalas, the baby panda asleep perched high in the tree, his little Ewok legs dangling—it was almost too much. And, oh God, the camels. Let me tell you something about camels: they’re huge. Massive. All regal in their gold fur and boredom. They gave us sideways glances with all the celebrity disdain of the privileged. They might as well have been ashing their cigarettes in our faces. Also, a llama sneezed on Jesse, which was hilarious. And we saw two endangered bears boofing. The female didn’t seem too into it, but what can you do when you’re the last of your species? It’s called “captive breeding,” and God bless it.

What else? We ran barefoot in the Pacific, all of our first time to touch it, the worldwide water. It was massive and beautiful, and we got one hell of a sunset. And San Francisco, where homeless comedians crack bad Michael Jackson jokes for change and pelt you with drugs and you have to sprint to get away from them, where we saw the marvelous Breeders do an in-store at Amoeba Records and later caught the new Romero flick at this tiny theatre where the seats were church pews and the PA was ragged and dangling from chains.

Geez, and our buddy David Long works at Google, and he happened to mention that we should come by his workplace for a tour and a free meal. As we are broke, we were delighted to take up the offer. It was like this multicultural technology Willy Wonka world where they dished out grilled Mahi Mahi and Ben and Jerry’s instead of Everlasting Gobstoppers. The folks at the Google homestead were kind and generous, and, after making use of the public bikes (baby blue! with bright orange flags!), I have to say I left smiling.

That’s about it for now. I’m listening to Tom Petty, and I just got off the phone with my little brother, who rules. I got my three tour necessities: Airships by Barry Hannah, The Complete W.B. Yeats, and one of many Calvin and Hobbes collections. I never go on tour without them. Just started The Quiet American. Anybody read that? I got it from these two kindheared, gnomey booksellers outside the venue. We’re on a night drive to Vegas which would probably be way more fun if we had money to blow once we got there. But! Music to play, good times to be had. I can’t wait.

Click above to watch "The Cheapest Key" from Kathleen Edwards' new album Asking For Flowers, out now on Zoe Records.

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One thing that amazes my wife is that I can’t remember to take out the trash on a regular basis. However, I can easily recall the most minuscule details when it comes to music.  Upon meeting me for the first time, she was slightly intrigued by the seemingly Rainman-esque musical knowledge I possessed, while at the same time frightened by the method in which I cataloged my CD collection. (For those keeping score at home, it's left to right in alphabetical order, and if there are multiple CDs for an artist, then the second level of sorting is in chronological order. That is, left to right by oldest to most recent. Think Shrevie from the movie Diner.)

This post revolves around the zenith of my musical favorites - an artist that Bill Graham once introduced as “…the innovative giant, Mr. Peter Gabriel.”  To put things into perspective, my sisters steered me towards Genesis in the late '70s/early '80s. Of course, that was the Phil Collins-led incarnation and I’ll just leave that alone for the time being. I subsequently discovered the Gabriel era on my own at the local record store. My attention was captivated for hours listening to The Lamb on headphones while consuming the double album’s liner notes and sleeve. I still don’t know what all that gibberish meant, but who cares? My copy of Armando Gallo’s picture bio was more than dog-eared, and the binding even came apart from excessive use. One fond memory I have was causing quite a stir at a Strawberries music store in New Haven, Connecticut upon finding my personal Jewel of the Nile - The Melting Face - Ein Deutsches Album. The store clerk just wanted me to pay for the disc and leave ASAP due to my hysterics. My life was complete once I heard "Spiel Ohne Grenzen" in its Fatherlandlike splendor.

But I digress. While this particular show at the Spectrum in Philadelphia was not my first Gabriel concert (it was actually my fourth), it’s memorable for a few reasons. This was the first event where I entered into the somewhat seedy underworld of ticket brokers. I was preparing to pull an all-nighter at the venue’s box office when a buddy suggested that I call a “ticket agent.” Out came the trusty Yellow Pages, and voila, I found plenty to choose from in exotic places like Pennsauken, Runnemede, and Collingswood, all located in lovely South Jersey just across the Walt Whitman Bridge from downtown Philly. I ended up purchasing tickets in the fifth row and happily paid $100 for each of them. My parents thought I was absolutely insane until I drew the parallel to what it cost them whenever they went to the opera at the Met and dinner in NYC afterwards. Music has an uncanny ability to affect you in many ways, and some would contend that opera has a rather spiritual quality to it. For my money, Peter Gabriel was the opera.

Having never been in possession of such high-quality tickets, it was rather surreal to pass by so many ushers on the way to our seats with each of them simply waving us through.  The tickets were even better than John DeBella (At the time, he was the Morning Zookeeper for WMMR which made him a big shot, not to mention that he referred to Peter as “The Angel Gabriel” and Patron Saint of his program.)

Now, onto the show - the opening track of San Jacinto showcased the minimalist lighting design that, ironically enough, produced a very dramatic effect. In fact, Gabriel’s manipulation of the light rigs was more obvious later in the show. Manu Katche simply owned Red Rain with his numerous drum fills that are without question the driving force behind that song when performed live. (If you don’t believe me, then check out Secret World Live disc one for proof). The set moved along quite nicely, but really picked up with "No Self Control." The previously mentioned lighting rigs were actually akin to seesaws with a row of three lights affixed to the top. As the song drew towards its conclusion, the lights were falling down on Gabriel in rapid succession, seemingly crushing him as he struggled to push each out of harm’s way. Not cutting edge technology when you have stagehands doing the heavy lifting, but pretty slick indeed. 

"Lay Your Hands On Me" was another highlight, if only for Gabriel’s backwards swan dive into the audience. Unfortunately, that practice has been removed from his performance repertoire, and for good reason. Regardless, for any performer to have the faith, stupidity, courage, or whatever to simply rely on his fans to catch him when he’s falling is a unique concept. I remember reading an interview where Gabriel described that he liked the tickle sensation upon hitting the audience. Fine by me. My sister Patti actually had her own Marcia-Brady-I’ll-never-wash-this-hand-moment during the next evening’s show, but that's way too long of a story for this post.

"Here Comes the Flood" is another track that will always be a personal favorite just because it’s so simple - the man and his piano, enough said. Gabriel introduced his band - Tony Levin on bass, David Rhodes on guitar, David Sancious on keyboards and the aforementioned Katche on drums were more than warmly received by the knowledgeable Philly crowd. Then we were treated to a send off of "In Your Eyes" followed by the anthem "Biko." It’s safe to say it was money well spent.

By the way, if you don’t know the story of Stephen Biko then I suggest checking out http://www.sbf.org.za/  Gabriel was one of the first high-profile artists who took social activism seriously. Whether it be Amnesty International, Witness, or The Elders, he championed human rights long before it was the sexy, politically correct thing to do.

I’ve been to at least 10 more Peter Gabriel performances since then, but this one will always stick out. The exception, of course, would be the U.S. tour from 1993 that I took my mother to, but that’s for another day.

Click above to watch "Get Better" from Mates of State's new album Re-Arrange Us, out May 20th on Barsuk Records.

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]]> tag:www.pastemagazine.com,2008:/blogs/sweettalk//18.3214 2008-04-29T17:21:00Z 2008-04-29T22:14:26Z

So I really don’t know why I bothered to pay attention to Steve Winwood’s latest, Nine Lives. I loved those early Spencer Davis singles. I loved those Traffic albums, but everybody loved those Traffic albums, and that was a long, long time ago. The first few solo albums from the early-to-mid ‘80s were decent, but they weren’t Traffic. And then I stopped paying attention. Nine Lives is the first new Winwood material I’ve heard in more than twenty years. And I take it all back. There is at least one ‘60s dinosaur out there who is making music that can stack up just fine with his classic material.

Last time I checked, Winwood’s music was being used as the backdrop for Michelob commercials. It was slick, glitzy, synth-driven pop, and it was the perfect accompaniment to nighttime video shots of the Manhattan skyline. Nine Lives sounds nothing like that. It’s a jamband album, a la the Traffic classics The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys and John Barleycorn Must Die, and, like all jamband albums, its biggest drawback is the absence of discernible hooks and singalong choruses. But look, if you’re going to go in for seven-minute jams, who would you rather listen to, boring young Dave Matthews or the suitably ancient but surprisingly frisky Steve Winwood? And how about if we brought along Eric Clapton – a totally resuscitated Eric Clapton at that – to play guitar? Is this sounding like a better proposition now? Because that’s what Winwood has done. It’s Son of Blind Faith, with some Latin rhythms and occasional sax and flute solos thrown in for good measure.

Winwood’s bluesy, soulful voice has lost none of its power, and the synths have given way to a much more organic sound dominated by Winwood’s Hammond B3 organ. It’s an admittedly calculated return to the past, and it recapitulates everything that was great about The Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, and Blind Faith. Sax/flute player Paul Booth ably fills the Chris Wood role in the band, and Winwood wraps his soulful pipes around, you guesed it, nine tunes that are surprisingly reflective and introspective. Best of all, Clapton shows up on “Dirty City” and unleashes his best guitar solo in at least a decade, a searing and yes, dirty, take on his patented blues playing. There are no hit singles here. Michelob won’t come knocking. But this is a warm, expansive slow burner of an album, and a welcome return to classic form.